By Nick Wilson and Matt Boyd

TLDR/Summary

• Three hundred participants met in Wellington for a symposium on the interacting global crises and potential cascading societal failures threatening Aotearoa New Zealand. An additional online audience livestreamed the one-day event due to the high demand. 
• The format combined informative expert short talks, small group discussions and collected participant input, with a view to national use of a deliberative democracy tool. The expert presentations spanned both global scale challenges and NZ-specific ones (eg, NZ food system) with climate change a particularly dominant theme. 
• The overall diagnosis of the world’s present polycrisis was stark and grim – human society is in severe overshoot and most of the planetary boundaries for a safe planet are being exceeded. However, presenters detailed solutions – including a multitude of pre-existing initiatives throughout Aotearoa.
• Democratic deliberation is critical when facing common threats and the organisers made use of the Mentimeter tool for collating audience views. This preliminary work generated statements for a planned future roll-out of a tool for national deliberative democracy on the polycrisis.
• From our perspective, enhancements to such events in the future could include: (i) a stronger focus on the systemic drivers of the underlying metacrisis, ie why we are in the situation we’re in; (ii) inclusion of a wider range of risks (such as geopolitical stresses, global resource shocks, and global catastrophic risks eg, extreme pandemics, nuclear war and technological risks); and (iii) more focus on feasible solutions that NZ civil society can progress. 
• A big thanks to the organisers and to all those who participated. Videos of all the presentations will be available online here by mid-July.

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“The Reality of Everything” Symposium was held in Wellington on 26 June 2026. It was well attended (300+ attendees) and our impression was of palpable interest and enthusiasm by the audience. There were informative background details to the Symposium via a Radio NZ interview of Dr Catherine Knight and on her Substack “An Uncommon Land”. Bernard Hickey also hosted “A Hoon on The Reality of Everything Symposium, interconnected crises & Public Health” and another one with a more climate change focus.

The polycrisis description and some solutions

The expert presentations typically had a sharp focus with high quality slides (and all these presentations will be available as online videos here by mid-July).

The starkest description of the polycrisis was given in the presentation by Dr Mike Joy. He highlighted unsustainable consumption/pollution patterns (currently requiring the equivalent of 3.3 planet earths) and with 7 out of the 9 planetary boundaries being exceeded (see also this Briefing on Earth Overshoot Day). He noted a particular NZ example of excessive nitrogen in water – posing a potential cancer risk (see also this Briefing). He highlighted that the “energy transition” was just one small part of the solution and his favoured approach was the marked reduction of consumption levels.

Professor James Renwick updated us on the climate crisis and its current manifestations eg, greater probability of heatwaves such as the massive one occurring at that moment in Europe. The planet is heading towards 3 degrees C of warming by the end of this century – which is likely to cause the melting of the West Antarctic ice sheet, drying out of the Amazon rainforest and a chance of ocean circulation collapse (ie, collapse of the AMOC which would be particularly catastrophic for places like Europe). For NZ, there will be far more disaster events (like Cyclone Gabrielle) hitting the country.

On a social system driver, Dr Mahina-a-rangi Baker presented on “White supremacy and the polycrisis”. She linked specific dominating doctrines from theology and in law that result in how colonial powers have dominated nature and indigenous peoples – including Māori. She highlighted Dr Moana Jackson’s work on constitutional transformation as a path forward in Aotearoa (see this interview with him on Radio Waatea).

Distinguished Professor Robert McLachan presented on “energy realities” and the problem of no fossil fuel having yet peaked in consumption. He described NZ’s Zero Carbon Act as having helped, but that it is currently on “life support” having been weakened by corporate influences and the current NZ Government. Solutions needed include the phasing out of fossil fuels and constraining growing sectors such as aviation (for which alternatives to fossil fuels are less readily available).

“Unleashing public finance” was covered by Dr Ganesh Ahirao and Morgan Edwards. They burst various myths such as the one of government finances being like those of a household. Instead, the government can be a money creator, can get relatively low interest rates, can borrow without collateral, and can go into debt without severe consequences (as shown when Crown settlement accounts frequently go negative). They argued that government has a unique ability to invest in building resilience and reducing poverty and inequities. See also this Substack piece on public finance myths relating to NZ.

Hillmare Schulze from BERL presented on “Trade in an unstable future”. She covered the problem with NZ exports (a narrow range of products to relatively few countries) which allows the trade system to transfer “shocks”. NZ needs to diversity its approach in terms of markets, transport systems, and domestic resilience. This would then dampen vulnerability to global trade risks. She highlighted that backup capacity is not inefficiency – it is building resilience. Building trusted partnerships (eg, seen recently with the Singapore-NZ deal) also needs to go alongside strengthening local capacity. 

“An uninsurable future?” was the question posed by Emeritus Professor Jonathan Boston (two days after the launch of his excellent book on the topic that one of us attended). In response to climate change (eg, rising sea levels and storm surges), the problems of rising costs of property insurance and “insurance retreat” are already happening in NZ. But these could get much worse and so we urgently need government policies that ensure that home insurance is affordable and available (ie, using insurance as a potential “shock absorber”). The government could also be an insurer of last resort and (where appropriate) support managed retreat – actions that may be justified by the unprecedented nature of the increasing climate change threat.    

Dr Catherine Knight presented on “National food security” and highlighted the lack of national self-sufficiency in various domains (eg, wheat), the problems with the supermarket duopoly, and the dominant focus on efficiency at the expense of resiliency. Solutions included promotion of urban gardening, expansion of iwi/hapu food production initiatives, food waste reduction and development of a “national food strategy”. See also the food systems piece on her Substack.

The final expert presentation was by Professor Alistair Woodward on “Public health in a degrading biosphere”. He demonstrated how climate change is harming health and killing people now – both internationally and in NZ. Some of the climate change fuelled storm/hurricane events are resulting in long-lasting damage with delayed deaths. The toxic algal bloom impacting South Australia is a possible example of surprising new changes arising from biosphere degradation (there is an interesting documentary on this algal bloom called “Toxic Tide”). Solutions with co-benefits for health include: (i) designing low-carbon and resilient health infrastructure; (ii) a shift to healthier plant-based diets; and (iii) expanding healthier low-carbon transport options eg, cycling.

Mentimeter and a tool (Polis) for deliberative democracy

A digital tool for engaging with audience views (Mentimeter) was introduced by Dr Anne Bardsley and Dr Cathrine Dyer. It seemed to work well and was used by audience members to generate statements on polycrisis-related issues of interest to them. The plan is for these to be used in a national roll-out of Polis 2 – a tool for deliberative democracy. Work is being done to have this as a sovereign NZ version (on secure university servers in NZ). Polis can handle up to one million participants and has safeguards to prevent a lobby group from gaming the results. The organisers stated that they will “be in touch about the Pol.is survey in the next few weeks”.

A rationale for promoting deliberative democracy comes from evidence that historic societies that were more democratic did better through periods of societal crisis/collapse (eg, see publications by Luke Kemp and Peter Turchin). We have also previously promoted two-way public engagement at all phases of national risk management (eg, in this blog and journal article). More specifically concerning the valuable use of Polis in Taiwan, see this excellent podcast featuring Audrey Tang.

Engagement and solutions from WEAll Aotearoa (Wellbeing Economy Alliance)

A participatory session with a solutions seeking focus was facilitated by Gareth Hughes and Sally Hett from WEAll. Comments from them highlighted WEAll’s work on building “a new economic system” that can address “the root causes of major challenges such as poverty, inequality, climate change, and biodiversity loss” (see the WEAll website). It was surprising to see them detail just how many local initiatives there are around NZ, especially with local food systems. The small group sessions we participated in had some good discussions – but there was no reporting back on main themes.  

Our reflections

From our perspective this symposium was a valuable overview of the polycrisis with a NZ lens and provided great networking opportunities. There was some good media coverage ahead of the event, with isolated mainstream reporting, although post-event reporting beyond the highly engaged climate/polycrisis audience seems limited at the time of writing. 

Future enhancements to such events in the future could include: 

1. A stronger focus on the underlying systemic drivers of the world’s predicament, ie a ‘metacrisis’ (eg, see this blog by Dr Matt Boyd and one about the Cascade Institute’s work). 
2. A more balanced discussion of the risk landscape – beyond the dominance of focus on the climate change threat. In particular, the inclusion of other global risks (such as the deteriorating geopolitical, trade and supply context, and global catastrophic risks eg, extreme pandemics, nuclear war and technological risks). There is NZ survey evidence of majority public support for government action on catastrophic risks (see this journal article). 
3. Given the above, there could be sessions on threat-agnostic resilience in a world of many complex (climate and other) stresses and on governance arrangements that could help achieve this.
4. The many benefits of resilience action (the ‘triple resilience dividend’) and the importance of regional/international cooperation on cross-border risks.
5. More focus on feasible solutions that NZ civil society can collectively progress and which ones need to be prioritised for both public discussion and then for implementation.

It was valuable to learn about the plans with Polis – but the topic of deliberative democracy needed more introductory context and framing. Reassurance around digital sovereignty and safeguards would help with engaging potential users.

We hope future events will build on momentum from this Symposium and help generate collective action on real-world local and national solutions to build a resilient Aotearoa that can best survive the polycrisis and the deeper metacrisis. A big thanks again to the Symposium organisers and to all those who participated.

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